


Homecoming

by Orockthro



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: Co-Parenting, F/M, Falling In Love, M/M, Multi, OT3, Polyamory, Post-Movie, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:04:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: She reaches out and captures his hand. “I fell in love.” And then she whispers into his ear, so quietly that even if someone had been listening they would never have heard, “Please, Vulko. Please go to them and look after them both. Give him something from me.” And she leans forward and presses her lips to his.And Vulko, always a servant to his queen, cannot help but obey. He goes to the surface that night.(Or, Vulko serves his queen. He carries messages between her and the surface, strives to keep her sons alive, and all through it slowly finds a home where the sea meets the land.)





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand (literally) thanks to Dien, who received this fic piecemeal in gchat and provided not only ample encouragement, but also solid feedback.

Vulko is not there when Atlanna returns to Atlantis. Orvax doesn’t trust him and hasn’t since Atlanna’s disappearance, and has taken to sending him on diplomatic excursions with exhaustive frequency. 

While this serves to remove Vulko from Orvax’s court without the political ramifications of something so much easier as execution, it also serves to expose Vulko to more of the waters outside Atlantis than most Atlanteans ever see. 

He’s returning from a month spent with the Fishermen. They never trusted him, never let him see their city in its full splendor, but they did treat him to wondrous and tantalizing glimpses of the world above. Unlike Atlantis, the Kingdom of the Fishermen has had semi-frequent contact with the surface world over the past centuries, and they prize their knowledge and connection with them rather than shun it. 

And so when Atlanna returns, Vulko is with the Fishermen, watching through a series of viewing bubbles as pirates in the Pacific kill a dolphin for sport. 

“They are not ready,” the diplomat he is speaking with says as Vulko tears himself away in horror from the beautiful creature’s death. “But they will be, some day.”

Vulko returns to Atlantis to find the city in explosive chaos. When he finally finds someone trustworthy to ask, they say, “The Queen has returned. She’d been living on the  _ surface.  _ Can you believe it? But she’s come to her senses. She’s back.”

And Vulko’s heart crumbles.

\---

Atlanna came to Vulko’s room the night before she disappeared. They didn’t talk about where she would go, because they both knew it would be better if he didn’t know. But when she was gone the next day and the guards sent to find her, it was not a surprise. 

He missed her every day for those three years. He didn’t understand why she left, not until he watched Orvax crush a statue with his bare hands when the acting king learned of her disappearance. 

\--

He goes to see her. He wants to swim to the Palace of Justice and fight his way to her, demanding to see his Queen-- his friend-- immediately. But he waits, bides his time in quiet servitude, and sees her four days after he returns. 

By the time he does, she is already married and Orvax is not the acting king but the King of Atlantis in full glory. 

He slips into the palace at night using the secret paths they used as children, and finds her where he expected to, sitting afloat a throne of bubbles in her childhood room. It is locked from the inside, but anyone can enter.

She sees him and leaps towards him, holding him in a tight embrace. 

“I’ve missed you,” she says against his throat, and his throat tightens at the sound of her voice after so long. 

“You came back,” he says to her. “Are you--”

“I had to, Vulko. I should have known I couldn’t escape.”

And then she bids him sit with her on the bubbles, and he sinks into the soft cradle of them next to her. She looks as she used to, no different for her time among the surface madmen and he drinks in the sight of her unharmed and whole and in Atlantis once more. 

She reaches out and captures his hand. “I fell in love.” And then she whispers into his ear, so quietly that even if someone had been listening they would never have heard, “Please, Vulko. Please go to them and look after them both. Give him something from me.” And she leans forward and presses her lips to his.

And Vulko, always a servant to his queen, cannot help but obey.

\---

He goes to the surface that night. 

Atlanna has informed him that Tom Curry’s lighthouse is situated north of the waters of Atlantis and it would have been more expedient to borrow one of the court’s small ships, but Vulko doesn’t want to risk Orvax knowing his purpose, so he slips away from the palace in the night and swims for hours, alone. 

It’s dangerous to do so, but he cannot risk otherwise. He swims and eats the fish he catches on his way, and arrives in the shallows of the northern waters the next morning as the sun begins to light the sea a golden red. 

The lighthouse is a strange thing; he sees it as soon as he raises his head above the waves. He floats in the water for a moment, taking in the sights and trying to piece together what Atlanna whispered to him, what he knows from his own education, and what he gleaned from the Fishermen about the surface dwellers. 

All three are at odds. 

For Atlanna, the lighthouse is a glowing beacon of hope and love, for Atlantis it is a portent of the surface dweller’s pushing increasingly into the oceans where they do not belong, and for the Fishermen it is a symbol of how uninformed and ignorant the surfacers are.

To Vulko, the lighthouse is a simple structure built to withstand wind and salt, nothing more. The waves push him towards the rocks, and he lets them. A knot grows in his stomach as he closes the distance to the world of the surface dwellers. Vulko’s strength has always been in his knowledge of the world around him. To leave that behind, even for his Queen, is a painful request. 

But he must. 

He climbs the thick wooden columns of the dock with ease, and finds himself on dry land, breathing salty air, and gasping it in. He is of the noble class, it is his gift to breath air as a surfacer does, but he is unused to oxygen without salt water and his lungs seize with the act. He falls to a knee to gain his breath, feels the air on his skin, wicking away the sea from him, and he regains his composure. 

When he looks up, it is to see a man dressed as a surfacer with wide eyes looking at him.

This is Atlanna’s Tom Curry. 

The man gains his voice before Vulko does, and says, “No offence, but you really weren’t who I was hoping to see.”

He reacts with instinct, drawing up to his full height and squaring his shoulders along with his jaw. 

But before he can say or do anything, the man is inches away, smelling like nothing Vulko is used to, peering into his face. “You look exhausted. Want to come up for tea? That is, unless you’re here to kill me. I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“I’m not here to harm you or your son. Atlanna sent me.” The man all but glows with his words. “She asked me to give you something.”

Vulko steels himself to the unpleasantness of the task he’s been given and leans forward, hand clutching at the surfacer’s shoulders-- he is warm, a furnace compared to sea dwellers-- and kisses him. 

Atlanna’s man doesn’t yield, but neither does he push Vulko away. He simply looks at him when Vulko pulls back, and says, “You’d best come up,” he says, turning away from Vulko and exposing his back like a fool. “I don’t have many neighbors, but boy do people like to talk around here.”

\---

The inside of the structure is alien, as is putting one foot in front of the other. His body is heavy and lacks the finesse he has worked so hard to attain in his movements, and he clumsily follows behind Atlanna’s human up the stairs and into the lighthouse itself. 

“Atlanna didn’t know about tea, so I’m guessing you don’t either. It’s good, steeped leaves of some plant I think. Makes you feel good. You drink it.”

A cup of warm, bitter smelling water is pushed towards him, and out of diplomatic practice, he accepts it. Tom Curry raises a cup of his own to his mouth and swallows a long glup. Surfacers are so odd about water. Vulko follows his example and breathes the warmed liquid into his lungs to be absorbed there. He doesn’t see the appeal, but nods as hospitality customs require. 

He pours the remainder of the tea down his throat, sets the cup down, and the ritual dispensed says, “Atlanna also asked me also to look in on your son.”

Tom Curry nods, but doesn’t move from the padded seat they reside on inside the dwelling. 

“I appreciate that.”

“But you will not let me see the boy.”

“Not yet, no.”

Intriguing. The Fishermen considered surfacers to be foolish and naive. Children playing with powers they did not understand. Vulko was raised to believe this was a generous, fool-hearted view of their destructive and disgusting tendencies. 

Tom Curry, though, appears neither foolish nor destructive. He is not threatening Vulko, nor is he handing over his child to him. 

He does, though, clear his throat and look Vulko over very carefully. It is unsettling to be viewed so openly and with such fascination. In Atlantis, Vulko’s appearance is of little interest to anyone; it is, in fact, his greatest strength, to be seen as having very little. Wisely, Tom Curry does not dismiss him.

“I was hoping you had another message from Atlanna. Something more verbal.” Then he grins sheepishly. “Though I didn’t mind the first one.”

Also intriguing. 

Vulko had found the experience of kissing the human something to be resigned towards. He was doing so for Atlanna, no other reason. It was true that kissing a creature so warm to the touch wasn’t unpleasant, but his curiosity had not been piqued. Until realizing that Tom Curry’s  _ was _ . He is still a surfacer, still a human madman, but he begins to see the man through Atlanna’s eyes, too: attractive, calm, kind, curious, and fascinating. 

 

“She is safe, for the moment, but her movements are severely limited. She misses you.” 

Vulko watches as Tom Curry’s face collapses in on itself. Grief, loneliness, hunger and desperation. 

“But she’s okay?”

Vulko smiles as gently as he’s able, which he’s all-too aware is not very gently at all. “Yes.”

Atlanna’s consort closes the shy distance between them and envelopes Vulko in an embrace he had not been expecting. It is animal and he can smell sweat and surfacer oil on his warm skin. And then, without any preamble, the human kisses him.

And Vulko does yield. He melts against the warm lips, the pressure of a man lonely and hurting, and he feels a coward. 

Tom Curry pulls back, smiles, and says, “You can give that to Atlanna, from me.”

\--

It is unwise to see Atlanna again so soon, so when Vulko returns from the surface it is to sleep for an entire day, exhausted and overwhelmed both. He does not think he will be missed.

He is woken by a banging on his chamber door and the voice of a page calling in, “Nuidis Vulko, you have been summoned by King Orvax. Please report to the Palace of Triumph immediately.” 

He dresses quickly and lets the cool material of his uniform draw him into its hold, the feeling of it against his skin a familiar comfort. The Palace of Triumph is not far, but he spends the swim furiously contemplating scenarios that could play out. 

The king could have followed him, despite Vulko’s precautions, and know of Atlanna’s consort. If so, this would lead to his public execution. While possible, the summoning via a page and not the king’s elite forces suggests otherwise.

Vulko passes under the Gate of Triumph and into the palace grounds. Of the royal palaces, Orvax prefers to spend his time here. The architecture is severe and jutting, and there is no question when one approaches who it is that rules. Ten years ago, when the betrothal had been re-confirmed, Atlanna’s father the then-king had given Orvax the gift of a hundred statues, and they line the entrance way to the palace here, all staring down at Vulko in stony judgement as he makes his way to the palace itself. A hundred sets of Orvax’s eyes, watching him.

He greets the guards at the door with a nod. They know him and let him enter, and one of them shepherds him directly to the king’s viewing chamber. It is not as grand as the Palace of Justice’s chamber, but it holds state very effectively. As Vulko swims through the entryway he’s greeted by the sight of Orvax, in living flesh, atop his throne. This one is made of gold and coral, materials he finds garish but that the king adores. The precious and valuable overtaking the mundane and common; it is Orvax’s way. 

Vulko knows his thoughts to be seditious, and he has never spoken them aloud. But the thoughts grow louder and more urgent in his mind day by day. 

He quiets this part of himself and instead observes. The king is alone but for a handful of advisors, an unusually small retinue for him. Whatever it is he wishes to speak to Vulko about, it is not his execution. Vulko feels only mild relief at this. His position within the court has shifted over the years, and while he ought to have achieved a higher stature at this point in his career, Orvax has limited his rise with his constant diplomatic missions. 

It does not surprise him when the king calls him forward, Vulko kneels deferentially, and Orvax says, “I see you are returned from the Fishermen. I have need of you elsewhere.”

“Of course, my king,” Vulko says, head still bowed. 

“You have learned much from the Fishermen, I hope. It is their knowledge I need you to employ. I know you were close to my wife when you were young.”

Vulko’s heart thunders in his chest, but he keeps his face as still as Orvax’s statues. “Yes, your majesty. Our families were close through her mother’s brother for a time.”

“That side of the family is often thought of as weak.”

Vulko breathes in deep, tasting the salt water on his tongue and letting it fill his lungs with quiet and calm. 

“It has been said, your majesty.” He can hear the tittering of the creatures the king calls his advisors, simple sycophants who do nothing more than parrot the king’s wishes back at him for fear of execution. They hold no wisdom of their own. “But those times have long passed.”

Orvax laughs, and it booms through the water. “Quick-tongued as ever, Vulko. My wife is returned, but refuses to speak of her time outside of our borders. Clearly she has been traumatized by her experiences among the beasts on land. Speak to her, convince her to tell the truth of her time with the savages so all of Atlantis might know the dangers, and then destroy whatever influences on land may still be affecting her.”

“Yes, my king,” Vulko says, and flees the Palace of Triumph. 

\--

Atlanna is the same set of rooms as before, just as trapped and just as happy to see him. They do not speak of the surface, for fear of outside intelligence listening in. Instead they speak of their childhoods.

“Do you remember all the gifts we used to give each other?” he says, when they have spoken for a few minutes about silly things children do. They never gave each other gifts as children, though.

“Oh, yes,” Atlanna says, her eyes alight and cleverly and following his mind easily. “Of course. They were so important to us. It meant the world, knowing that we could pass them along.”

He smiles at her. She’s beautiful down here, even trapped in her childhood room like a naughty toddler instead of the queen she is. She’s wearing royal white, as is her right, and she glows from the filtered light of the jellyfish that swim above. “There was nothing more important,” he agrees. “It was our own little way of telling secrets. You’d give one, and I’d give the same one back to you, to make sure you knew that I understood its importance.”

And Atlanna’s eyes begin to shine. “Yes. Yes, it was so wonderful. Oh, Vulko, come here. I’ve missed you.”

She draws him into an embrace, and he lets himself be folded into her arms. “I have another gift,” she says very quietly against his ear, the water tickling him as the currents shift. 

“As do I,” Vulko says just as quietly, and under the cover of their embrace, he kisses her gently and sweetly. 

She weeps, but only he can see the redness of her eyes. She kisses him back, and he knows that whatever this is, whatever is happening between his queen and the surface man and himself, will not be ended easily or swiftly or without pain. 

But she’s his queen, and he obeys.

\--

The king’s command leaves him a great deal of freedom in his movements. He spends time with Atlanna, asking her numerous questions that she deftly side-steps, and he allows himself to be forestalled by her. 

Eventually she tells him, “I stayed on the mainland in a place called Massachusetts, in the northern waters. If you wish me to tell you more, you must prove you can find it.”

He tells this to the king immediately, as he must. Orvax growls at the news, and waves a hand at him. “You were with the Fishermen, surely you studied their maps. Find the place and make them pay for taking my queen from me.”

Vulko bows and swims away, mind racing. He leaves Atlantis that night, this time with a ship and Orvax’s seal of approval on his documentation. 

The maps provided by the Fishermen Kingdom that lay in the guarded libraries of Atlantis are incomplete. They do not trust Atlanteans with the full details, but the king is not wrong that Vulko learned more than he was intended during his month with the rival kingdom. He knows where Massachusetts is, and he also knows that Atlanna’s consort is not there but further north.

He stows the ship in the reefs near to the shore of the place called the Cape of Cod, but swims north after verifying he is not followed. 

He does not go to Massachusetts, but to Maine and to Atlanna’s consort.

\--

Tom Curry smiles when he sees him. Vulko does not know what to make of that. He smiles and then hands him a towel and says, “I was hoping you’d come back. You’re dripping.”

Surfacers prefer to be dry, and Vulko prefers to be polite, so he takes the proffered fabric and, per Tom Curry’s amused direction, rubs it over himself until the other man nods and says, “Good enough.”

It is strange to be out of water and exposed like this; he is vulnerable here like nowhere else, without his spear, out of his element. Anywhere else and this vulnerability would spell his death. 

It’s been two weeks, and Vulko notices the biggest change immediately. As Atlanna’s consort leads them into the sitting area of the home, he pats the top of the head of a curly-haired child, no more than three years old, curled up on the sofa with a fake animal made of fabric tucked in his arms. He’s asleep, breathing the air like he was born to it.

“This is Arthur,” Tom says. He’s watching Vulko very carefully, but he must be aware that should Vulko wish to do either of them harm, he would have no hope of stopping him. 

Vulko knows he’s under careful scrutiny, but he’s enraptured. This is Atlanna’s child. He can see her in the boy’s nose, the shape of his ears, the curl of his hair. And he can feel, almost like a wave crashing into him, his importance.

“You’re letting me near him.”

Tom smiles again, and it’s easy to see why Atlanna fell in love with him like this; he’s full of life and energy and joy and kindness. So many things that are hidden away and ground down like stones into sand in Atlantis. “Yeah, I am. But rule number one,” he says, and his voice drops to a whisper, “is never wake a sleeping baby. He’ll be out for awhile. Let’s talk outside.”

Tom closes the door to his home, his son safely tucked away, and leads them down to the water where they perch on rocks like birds. 

“Atlanna is alright?”

“Yes. She misses you and wishes she could be here. It is...” Vulko pauses, considering how to best explain the situation. “Likely that she will be unable to return to you for some time. The king is not pleased with her, but she and I are working to make sure he does not learn of you and your son.” He smiles at Tom, and he surprises himself with how giddy he feels. It is not a word he usually applies to his life. “The king has charged me with finding you.”

Tom grins back. “Well aren’t we lucky, then.”

“Quite. Atlanna gave me another message for you.”

“Oh?”

He leans over, hands on the rough rock to balance himself, and kisses his Queens consort again, this time slowly, deeply, and with care. 

Against his lips Tom says, “I’d better make sure I write her a long reply, hm?” The words vibrate through the air currents and against his skin, and Vulko shudders. Everything feels so different out of water. Skin to skin is so much more exposed and erotic. 

He gasps and pulls away. Tom is looking at him. His lips are red from kissing. 

“You’ll pass that along? And come back? I miss her so much. You’ll let her know?”

“Yes,” Vulko says. “Of course.”

\--

He goes to Massachusetts and brings the king signs of surfacer waste. Oil, dead fish, and trash. 

“They are fools and know nothing,” he says, “and do not remember her.”

For the moment, the king is appeased.

\--

The ruse is easy, until it becomes difficult, as is often the way of things. Weeks pass with Vulko passing off inconsequential facts about surfacer life as intelligence of Atlanna’s previous whereabouts. He thinks himself in complete control of the situation, and then one day when he visits Atlanna to pass along her consort’s most recent kiss, he finds himself looking at an empty room.

He swims out and finds a page. “Where is the queen?”

The page, a young boy in a warrior’s mail that makes him look even younger than he is, bows his head and says, “With the king, at the Palace of Triumph.”

A pit begins to form in Vulko’s belly, and it grows as he makes his way past the statues of Orvax staring down at him into the waiting rooms full of gilded coral. He places his request for an audience and waits, forcing himself to be still and calm. A statue of himself. 

After half the day passes-- the cynical part of him is sure it’s an intentional ploy to remind him of his place-- the door is opened for him into the throne room. 

It is much the same as last time he was here, only now instead of his aides and advisers at his side, the king has only one person seated at his left. Queen Atlanna, a gold crown restored to her head.

“Nuidis,” Orvax says, his voice amplified by the aquacoustics of the room, “I was wondering when you would arrive.”

Vulko approaches to the appropriate distance, and bows. “Your majesties.”

Orvax has never loved anything as much as his own power, and the sound of his own voice is as much a power as his trident. He has crushed enemies with both. 

“My queen has been telling me all sorts of things,” he says, clutching one of her hands in his own. “Things I could hardly believe.”

Atlanna is staring out towards Vulko, but her face is blank. Good, Vulko thinks. 

He chooses his words carefully. “Have you discovered the truth, my king?”

Orvax booms out a laugh. “I have indeed. I find it interesting, though, that you did not. I had not thought you so incompetent.”

Atlanna places a chaste kiss on Orvax’s cheek. “Do not be angry, Orvax. Vulko simply doesn’t think creatively. His strengths are tactics.”

It disgusts Vulko, to see her put on this farce. He knows she hates the man, and he knows just as surely that this show is to save Tom, her child Arthur, and probably Vulko, too. It has been a month of pleasant kisses on the surface, secret smiles under the sea. It wasn’t meant to last, but it pains him anyway to see it die in front of him. 

“Queen Atlanna went to the surface to learn of music. Can you believe it? The sound surfacers make with things that conduct air currents. And she lost track of time, and then the horrible creatures would not let her leave. They were enchanted with her, much like I am. You are to take a battalion and kill them.”

Orvax says the last utterance casually and without care, as he caresses Atlanna’s hand and the ring he has placed there. 

“Of course, King Orvax,” Vulko says, bows deep, and does not look back to either of them as he swims away. 

\--

Vulko is perfectly aware that it is a test. 

He takes the battalion of Orvax’s soldiers to the surface, to a small town in Massachusetts where the waters meet, and murders three men who Atlanna has identified. He hopes they are unsavory, cruel surfacers, but he doesn’t know. He kills them in their sleep, and the soldiers he brings with him take the bodies to the sea. 

He presents their heads to Orvax who smiles, distractedly, and says, “Thank you, Vulko. You may go.”

\--

Vulko does not go to the surface again, not for a long time. He doesn’t dare risk it. They were fools, before, thinking they could have something like this. He won’t risk Atlanna’s consort and her child, and he dreams about Orvax smiling as he tells Vulko to kill them.

Eight months after Vulko kills the surfacers Atlanna gives birth to Orvax’s son and the kingdom celebrates the birth of the new heir. 

Vulko goes to Atlanna when Orm, the child named for Orvax’s line but who looks like Atlanna even as an infant, is not yet two days old. He’s suckling at her breast and her eyes are red.

“He should know,” she tells him. She’s looking at her son, her second son, but Vulko knows that is not who she is speaking of. He kisses her head, all too aware that they are being watched, and says, “I’m sure he will soon know everything he needs to.”

Atlanna reaches out with the hand that isn’t holding her child to her chest and captures Vulko’s. “You will teach him, won’t you? It’s my right as Queen to decide who teaches him, and I’d have it be you.”

He looks into her eyes. This is not the child he grew up with. This is his queen. 

Vulko, his hand still held in hers, drops to his knee at her feet. “Until I no longer breathe, I will aid any child of yours.”

\--

It’s been nearly two years. Atlanna’s second born is approaching his first birthday, and finally, blissfully, Vulko has secured himself the freedom to move without being watched. 

It’s come at the price of time, but whether Tom Curry understands it or not is immaterial. Vulko will not risk their lives, not when Atlanna has already interred herself with Orvax to protect them.

It is climbing the dock’s pillars, the air wicking away the moisture of the sea, that Vulko realizes he is committing treason. 

It crept up on him, and he has no regrets, but it is shocking what small turns-- loving Atlanna, fearing for her safety, finding her consort above sea, learning her child is a sweet young boy who giggles at fish-- result in a fate that will end in his death should it be found out. He is an enemy of Orvax, but not Atlantis. The thought fills him like water fills lungs. 

And so does the solution. 

Tom Curry weeps when he sees him. He leaves his door wide open and skids down the steps to the water, Arthur-- so much taller than last Vulko saw him-- following right behind. Tom pulls Vulko into a bodily embrace and Vulko, shocked at the contact after so long, stands there, still and breathing air again. 

“Thought you’d gone and died,” Tom says. “Thought--”

“No. No, things just became... complicated. It should be easier for me to visit from now on.” Tom pulls back, his shirt now soaked from Vulko’s damp skin but keeps his hands on Vulko’s shoulders, looking him over.

“Arthur, you remember Vulko?”

Arthur, nearly to his father’s hip now, looks at Vulko with bright eyes. Not Atlanna’s eyes, no. Not like Orm is his mother’s image reflected back down. Arthur is his own being, but some of her is there, and that part of him stares up at Vulko with rapt attention. 

Vulko drops to one knee, “Hello Arthur. I am a friend of your mother’s. I’m going to teach you about her world.” And, he thinks silently to himself, when you’re ready, you will be my king.

\--

That night he stays in Tom’s home. He isn’t expected back in Atlantis for days; his role has expanded from minor noble with diplomatic missions, to full fledged diplomatic advisor to the king’s council. The shift is largely because Atlanna has named him Orm’s tutor, though the child is too young to have need of him yet, and Orvax would lose face should the educator of his heir be so minor a figure in his court. 

The result is that even though Orvax watches him closely, he is awarded his own ship with diplomatic clearance, and forays into foreign waters are expected as he extends the will of Atlantis’s crown. 

Technically, he’s doing just that. Simply Atlanna’s crown, not Orvax’s. 

Tom feeds him cooked food that is bland and tasteless and limp. He calls it pasta, and Vulko eats it to appease him. Arthur giggles at him when he makes a face. They sit and drink Atlanna’s favorite tea afterwards, and Vulko tells Arthur stories of Atlanna’s childhood. 

The time the two of them stole into the Great Library in the Palace of Truth. 

The time Atlanna refused to wear a tiara because she wanted to make her own, and they hid in the Temple of the Fallen for two hours before her father’s guards found them.

And then, finally, when Arthur is growing sleepy, Vulkos says, “There’s another special reason I’m here, Arthur.” He looks at Tom as he speaks. “It’s to tell you that you have a younger brother.” 

Arthur shoots up in his father’s lap and looks at Vulko with wide, innocent eyes. “I do? Where!”

“In Atlantis, of course. With your mother. Someday all of you will be together again. But for now, you have to grow up big and strong so you can take care of him later.”

Arthur nods, but even his excitement cannot forestall his exhaustion, and after a few more tales he begins to fall asleep and Tom carries him up to his bedroom. 

When he returns he sits next to Vulko on the sofa so close that their flanks touch. “He’s not yours.”

Vulko shakes his head. “No. Her son, her second son, is King Orvax’s. He is healthy and hale and looks like Atlanna, even now. He’s nearly a year old. He will be raised to be king.”

Beside him Tom is silent. Even his body is quiet, which is unusual. The man is so often darting about, hands moving and fixing things or soothing his child. Vulko remembers this, even after so long. 

Vulko is compelled to fill the space Tom would normally take, and he clasps his hands around Tom’s. “You know that she loves you. She returned to save you; if she had stayed, all three of you would be dead by now.”

The quietness is gone, replaced by a trembling. He thinks the man is weeping until he realizes it’s an emotion he is much more accustomed to seeing: rage.

“It’s just so wrong. It’s all just so wrong. She’s  _ trapped _ down there, and it’s not fair. She deserves to be free.”

In all of this, Atlanna’s consort has not thought of himself. Not once. 

Vulko presses himself close and leans in until he can taste the air around the man’s lips. The hand that isn’t holding Tom’s tight slips around to clasp the back of his neck. The man’s skin is so warm. “She chose you,” he says, as fiercely as he’s able. “And she was right to do so. You are a good man, Tom Curry.”

A hand slips around the nape of his own neck, and they are kissing again. Vulko’s missed this, desperately. He’s been so lonely, so isolated, not just in his thoughts but in his body, too. He’s wanted to touch, to hold, to kiss. But he and Atlanna are never alone, and for two years he simply existed-- crawling up through Orvax’s court, falling into an exhausted slumber, and repeating day in and day out. 

Two years is a terribly long time.

But now... he’s here. On the surface. And in Tom Curry’s arms.

He lets himself be drawn in and loses himself to the feeling of another man-- a surfacer’s-- hands upon his skin. Tom is touching his face, and then his throat, and then finding the tender skin where his suit exposes his collarbone. And then the clasp that holds the suit in place.

“Gods below, I’ve missed you,” Vulko mutters into the skin beneath Tom’s earlobe, and the man shudders. Air flows so interestingly from his mouth and onto skin. 

“God above I’ve missed you, too.”

They kiss for an hour, enjoying the comforts of one another, and then they make love on the sofa, and Vulko falls asleep for the very first time not underwater. 

He wakes up gasping-- he’s never woken up breathing air before-- and with Tom’s hands tangled in his hair which long ago came loose from its tie. 

Vulko pulls himself free, checks on Arthur who is still sleeping curled up in his bed, and goes to watch the sunrise from the docks. Tom joins him after a few minutes, bundled up in a sweater that, confusingly, makes him look smaller. 

“She told me she’d come back to me at sunrise. So I come down here everyday.”

Vulko swallows and threads his fingers into Tom’s hand. “She will,” he says. He doesn’t tell Tom that Atlanna is bridled, that she is raising the son of a man she hates, that she will not abandon that son to a man like Orvax. And that Orvax will never, ever, let Orm leave. “In time.”

Tom rests a hand on his shoulder. “Arthur’s getting big. He’s asking questions, and I can only help him so much.”

“I will do my best,” Vulko says. He means it. As if, in any life, he could do anything else for the child of not just Atlanna, but Tom, for he loves them both.

\--

He stays two days, and then returns to Atlantis, by way of the Fishermen. When he goes through the city gates, he flashes his diplomatic clearance and takes a Fisherman map to the archives, neatly explaining his disappearance. 

And then he goes to Atlanna.

Orm swims through the nursery with haphazard and playful little kicks, and Atlanna is playing with him when Vulko arrives at the royal suite. Orvax is touring among the lower levels of the city, and doesn’t often venture to the nursery, leaving Orm to his wife’s care until he’s old enough to hold a trident. 

Even so, neither Vulko nor Atlanna are foolish enough to think they are free here. 

“Vulko! Starting early as his teacher, I see,” Atlanna says, slyly. 

Vulko grins and scoops the toddler up into his arms. So different from Arthur, this child. And by Atlantean law, despite Orvax’s beliefs, this boy with his hair matching the royal line of his mother, is not heir to the throne. The knowledge is a fluttering thrill in his belly. 

“Of course, my queen,” he says. “Knowledge and wisdom start early. I will visit as frequently as I’m able. I’ve already started.”  She smiles and looks at him like he’s the last drop of water in the sea. She understands his meaning perfectly, but he presses on. “You know I will do anything to make sure your child knows his place in our world.”

“I know.” She looks between him and little Orm squirming through the water between them. “I appreciate that. I worry I may not always be here for him, and I’m reassured to know that you will be.”

Vulko does not reply; his throat is as dry as if here were up on land with Tom and Arthur again. 

There is nothing he can say that would not be a platitude or a lie, so he reaches out and clasps her hand into his, wishing he could kiss her.

\--

Life continues, as it always manages to, at a speed Vulko doesn’t anticipate. He blinks and years have passed. Arthur is strong and dark and wild, flitting between the land and sea like he was born to it. And he was. Orm is silent and quiet and intelligent, bearing up well under Orvax’s heavy hand. Vulko does what he can to temper the children he’s been entrusted with-- for Arthur, to be a guiding example of the strength of the ocean; for Orm to reinforce the teachings of his mother, to show the boy that kindness does not equate with weakness-- but time is always too short. He is always balancing Arthur with Tom, Tom with his duties to Orvax and the court, and his duties with Atlanna, and Atlanna with Orm. And all of it with Arthur again. 

There simply isn’t time. 

And then time stops. 

Vulko is at court, the session regarding the annexation of Brine territory into Atlantis’s hands is in recess, and he’s studying one of the maps. Pinpricks of light represent the divisions between the sea kingdoms, and then without warning Orvax’s trident is smashing through the projection device, his voice a wordless roar.

He kills two pages, and Vulko watches as the trident he wields stabs through the boys chests in a single piercing jab. Their blood mingles with the water, and he tastes it. 

Vulko drops to his knees, as do the rest of the courtiers. There is no other option. To fight the king is to die. To submit there is at least the chance to live.

Eventually he stops, and Vulko looks up at him. He’s heaving great gulps of water, his chest rising and falling violently beneath his plate armor. He looks every bit a violent madman with a crown.

It is Abrax who speaks up; a cousin of Orvax’s on his father’s side, it is unlikely he’ll be gutted. 

“My king, what has happened?”

Orvax points his blood-stained trident at Abrax but does not strike. “I have been betrayed.”

“By whom?”

The roar erupts out of Orvax again. “Leave me!”

The court disbands like minnows, flitting away and into the relative safety of the courtyard faster than if they’d been chased by a shark. But Vulko hesitates. He is aware that his hesitation might cost him his life, but he must know. He is a diplomat at his heart, and to be caught ignorant is to be caught dead. 

“My king?”

Orvax turns and fixes Vulko with a calculating stare.

“Did you know?”

Vulko, still bowed, prostrates himself further. “Know what, King Orvax?”

The trident slams into the marble floor beside his head, chips of white fluttering up through the water around them. 

“Did you know that the bitch bedded a surfacer and bore him a son.”

Vulko presses his forehead to the cool stone. He will likely die here, but he is not thinking about that. He is thinking about Arthur and Tom and Atlanna, and how if he chooses his words incorrectly, they will die. Their fate, as always, rests on his tongue. 

“My king, I am horrified.” His voice breaks.

The trident is pulled from the stone and Vulko prepares himself for a killing blow. He does not move.

“Nuidis Vulko. Get up.”

He takes a breath, sucks in the bloody water around himself, and rises to a kneel, his head still bowed. 

“You are her friend. You are weak, your family is weak, and I would like to kill you.”

Vulko does not move. He cannot defend himself and protect Tom and Arthur. He must wait for Orvax to slit his throat or sacrifice them. And so he is still under Orvax’s booming voice.

“Take a battalion and go to my wife’s rooms. Make sure my son is safe and away from her, and then take her to the Trench. I do not wish to see her again. If you fail, I will have your family line burned from the sea and the name Vulko will never be spoken again.” 

\--

Atlanna is not weeping when Vulko arrives. She is calm and collected and standing strong and beautiful. Orm, now a boy not a child, looks at her with wide eyes when they come into the room, tridents raised.

“Orm, go on my child,” she says, and kisses him once upon his forehead. “I will always love you. Remember that. My love is not weak.” And she pushes him gently towards Vulko, who holds the boy back as the soldiers surround her and put her into irons. 

“Vulko, what’s happening?”

Orm doesn’t cry for his mother or demand that they stop. He asks the question, his fingers tight and painful on Vulko’s arm. 

“Your mother is being arrested for treason against the king, my prince,” he says. He can, of course, say nothing else. He speaks as gently as he can, because there is nothing gentle about the way that Atlanna’s hands are put through the shackles, or the way her crown is ripped from her head. Her hair floats around her face; a halo seared into Vulko’s mind. 

“What did she do?”

Vulko’s heart crumbles. Orm, child of his beautiful Atlanna, does not question her guilt, does not demand proof, does not rush to her aid. 

He kneels down so he is at Orm’s height as his mother is pulled from the room. “She loved another man and she birthed you a brother many years ago, before you were born. But that man was from the surface.”

He watches Orm process the information. His lips pursing, his face-- still child-shaped, though quite serious-- closing around itself, his opinion already formed. 

“Why?”

“Love is a powerful thing, my prince.”

He looks up at Vulko, angry for the first time. “But she loves  _ me _ .”

“Of course, Orm. She loves you deeply and she will always be your mother. But she loved them, too.” Vulko is all-too aware that they are not alone. 

“Will she die?”

Not ‘will my father kill her,’ simply ‘will she die.’ Oh, Vulko thinks, how I’ve failed you already. 

“Yes.”

Orm releases his grip from Vulko’s arm and pushes himself away. “I would like to be left alone now.”

Vulko bows his head. “Of course, my prince.”

\--

They take Atlanna to the Trench. She is chained and made to swim through the palaces, but her head is held high and she does not plead for her life, not even when courtiers who know varying versions of the truth begin to hurl insults at her.

She is like a goddess, ephemeral and above the base beings who dare to bring her down. 

Vulko trails behind, part of the procession of officials, and is not allowed in the same transport ship as she is and instead must sit quiet and still as the ships converge and sail to the Trench together.

Orvax is not with them. He values Atlanna so little that he will not even witness the death he’s ordered for her. 

Vulko spends the travel in mute pain, and schools his face to show nothing.

The Trench are vicious, monstrous creatures that feast on anything with flesh that enters their waters. Nothing has ever returned. It is a popular place of death; Orvax has sentenced several traitors to die here in the last decade. The Trench are monsters of children’s tales, and the fear of them continues into adulthood with good reason.

The waters of their kingdom are edged with mountains, jagged like teeth. The ships stop at the peak of one and the Atlanteans file out. Atlanna stands among them a golden statue.

One of Orvax’s generals says the customary words:

“Queen Atlanna, you have been accused of treason against our King Orvax having committed grievous sins against the crown and our kingdom. You are hereby committed to the Trench. Let their welcome be your punishment.” 

Vulko feels cold. Frozen. Like he’s already been pushed into the Trench himself. 

“Have you any last words you wish recorded?”

Atlanna stands, head held high, and looks into Vulko’s eyes. “I do.”

“Speak them now.”

“I am your queen. And someday my son will be your king.” 

Vulko looks back at her and doesn't blink. He cannot save her, as much as he wishes to. Even if he could kill all the soldiers here, Orvax would find them. Orvax will always find them. He cannot save her, but he can do her the honor of not looking away. 

“I only ask,” she continues, “That you hold your tears and love them for me.”

And Atlanna is pushed into the Trench. 

Vulko swallows his cry, presses his fingernails into his hands until they bleed, and watches as the swarms descend around her. 

\--

He dreams of her dying. Over and over again. 

He hates himself for not being able to save her. For not even trying.

After the ships return from the Trench, Vulko prostrates himself in front of the king once more. 

“Queen Atlanna has been sacrificed to the Trench, my king,” he says calmly. He’s able to be calm. His face and voice are steady and unwavering. “What else would you have of me?”

The king laughs and his armor rattles. 

“Of you? Nothing. Go away, Nuidis Vulko. Go to the nursery and take my son from it. He’s a man, now.”

Atlanna’s living quarters are destroyed, and Orm is sent to live in the Palace of Triumph.

Vulko comforts Orm, who refuses him, and eventually swallows his cowardice and swims to the surface.

He swims like he did that first time; without a ship, without a plan, without any understanding. 

Vulko is a bubble: fragile, ready to burst, and floating inevitably towards the surface.

He walks into Tom’s lighthouse, sea water pouring off of him along with his composure, and stands in the kitchen until Atlanna’s consort-- Atlanna’s widower-- comes home. He drops the toolbox he’s carrying with a horrible bang when he sees Vulko’s face.

“No,” he says. 

“I am so sorry,” Vulko says back, voice hoarse. The air is uncomfortable in his lungs and he relishes the discomfort. He wants to never be comfortable again in this world without Atlanna. “I couldn’t stop them.”

“No,” he repeats. “No, no, she promised. She promised she would come back.”

“She’s gone.”

\--

They don’t tell Arthur. 

Vulko wants to, deeply. It burns in him not to tell this child he’s come to love that his mother is dead, but Tom refuses. Tom who does not touch him for weeks because he does not want to hear what Vulko has to say. And as much as Vulko is teaching Arthur how to be king of Atlantis, Tom is the boy’s father, not Nuidis.

This pains him, too.

But he defers to Tom. And eventually, Tom threads his fingers into Vulko’s and they sit together, touching once more.

“It isn’t fair,” he says. 

It’s a childish thing to say, but Vulko does not begrudge him it. It  _ isn’t _ fair. He pulls a knife from a sheath at his waist and hands it to Tom in lieu of saying something banal and meaningless.

Tom picks the knife up gingerly, like he’s never held a weapon before. He’s so different from Orvax. He holds it like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

Vulko bows his head to Tom, prostrates himself, and says again, “Cut it all off.”

Tom hesitates until Vulko places a firm hand around the wrist holding the knife and guides it to his head. “Please.”

Head bowed he feels the tug of the knife as it pulls against his hair and then, without preamble, it is gone. A weight lifted. 

He stays bowed. He hears the blade clatter to the rocks below, Tom heaving it away as if violence could ever be diverted with desire, and then feels Tom’s hands run through his hair. Strong and steady, fingers brushing the nape of his neck, fluttering through the jagged strands. 

“It’s not your fault,” Tom whispers. 

Still kneeling at Tom’s side, Vulko begins to tremble. 

Tom pulls him close, keeps a firm hand on the back of Vulko’s head, and whispers again and again, “It’s not your fault.”

\--

Orvax molds Orm into his shape. He teaches the boy about war and leadership, and Orm kills his first man in combat with a trident on his thirteenth birthday. 

They celebrate it in the Palace of Triumph with a feast, and Orvax presents Orm with a fine set of armor to commemorate the occasion. 

Vulko watches on.

The same year, Arthur kisses a girl and asks Vulko if sex is the same in Atlantis. Vulko, of course, schools his face in the same stony manner as a man in Orvax’s court, and says it is a question he ought to ask his father.

The boys grow up, and grow differently, and Vulko finds himself spending more time with Orm than Arthur. Orm needs him more. Arthur has Tom, and Orm has only Orvax; he prays Atlanna would forgive him.

Tom does, of course. 

“I understand,” he says one morning standing at the dock at sunrise. “That boy needs you, too.”

But Vulko misses Tom and Arthur both, as he trains Orm and tries, carefully and tirelessly, to slip messages from Orm’s lost mother into his life. 

“Sometimes, your highness, might is not the wisest answer,” he tells Orm, and then shows him the way to solve the same problem with diplomatic communications. 

Orm nods, soaking it all up. Vulko thinks he understands until he says, “Of course. Words are also weapons.” 

He keeps his face still. “As you say, your highness.” 

\--

He tells Arthur the truth of Atlanna’s demise. 

Tom doesn’t speak to him for a week, but he couldn’t lie to Arthur any more. Not when he lies so much to Orm.

\--

Years pass. 

Vulko grows older; so does Tom. 

So, too, do Arthur and Orm. 

And Orvax dies.

It happens quickly. He takes a wound during combat that doesn’t heal, and a festering takes over his body. 

Overnight, Orm becomes king. He is eighteen and parentless, and he looks to Vulko with wide, frightened eyes in the privacy of his ready rooms and says, “You’re staying.” It isn’t a question, but an order from his new king. 

Vulko bows his head. “Of course, my king.”

\--

When Arthur rejects him, it breaks his heart. 

Arthur is a man now, grown and left home, and he does not want any part of Atlantis. 

“I’m sorry Vulko, but fuck that noise. That place killed my mom, I can’t, okay. Just, like, I need some space, okay.”

“Arthur, I know--”

“No, you don’t, okay. She was my  _ mom _ .”

He doesn’t tell Arthur that he loved Atlanna, too, more than the sea itself, or that it was he who broke down her door when she was arrested. Or that he watched her fall into the Trench to her death and did nothing to stop it. 

He doesn’t say that he’s failed Atlanna, even though there could be no clearer evidence that he has. 

Vulko bows his head and says, “Of course, Arthur. Be well.” Because it’s what Tom would have wanted.

\--

He says goodbye to Tom that night. He doesn’t say that he won’t be coming back, but it’s clear they both know what they’re saying to be a final goodbye. 

“Orm is king now, and I’m one of his prime advisors. I cannot come here without my absence being noticed anymore and I won’t put you or Arthur in danger.”

Tom looks away. 

“You’d think I’d be better at this by now,” he says ruefully. “Falling for royal sea creatures who end up leaving.” He still refuses to refer to Atlanna as gone. He cracks a smile at Vulko. “Make me a promise?”

Vulko swallows. “Anything,” he says, and means it. 

“Come back someday.”

\--

Years pass once more. This time Vulko spends them in the sea. He watches Orm grow into a king, watches his ambitions turn from aspirations to actions, and watches those actions spiral in ways that Orvax, not Atlanna, would take pride in. 

When Orm orders Vulko to approach King Nereus about an alliance, Vulko does so, reprising his foreign ambassador role from so many years ago. 

And when the surfacers attack, he fights alongside Orm because Orm is his king. 

But he still sends Mera to Arthur; let it never be said that Nuidis Vulko was a man without a multitude of plans.

And, fool that he is, he once again thinks he has the situation in hand. He thinks he has Orm under control, at least long enough for Arthur to find his sea legs and his place. But Orm turns to him, a smooth smile that Vulko taught him, not his father, and calls him traitor. 

Everything that Vulko has worked for, everything he has tried so hard to protect, is shattered. He holds his head up high as he is clapped in restraints and vows to be like Atlanna was when she was taken to the Trench; never surrendering her will, even at the end. 

He isn’t killed, though. 

He is left under guard to watch his work fall to pieces. 

But then there is Arthur, standing atop the broken body of a warship and holding Atlan’s trident to Orm’s bare throat, and Atlanna herself rising from the sea bathed in gold and white and sun. 

_ Vulko _ falls to pieces.

He falls to his knee in front of her, does her bidding and arrests her son, and then stands there, unable to do anything but soak in her presence.

Atlanna, his queen, alive.

The soldiers disperse as the news that the battle is ended filters through the sea. Arthur is king of Atlantis, the war against the surfacers put to a halt. Nereus takes his soldiers back to Xebel, and the Fisherman princess does the same. 

Their work is far from done, but for now Vulko breathes surface air again for the first time in years, filled with ocean spray, and he reaches for Atlanna.

His hand finds hers, and she clutches at him. 

“My queen,” he whispers. “I have failed you.”

“No,” she says back. Her voice is not a whisper, but loud and hale and pure. “No, Vulko, you have never failed me.” She pulls him to her chest. 

Vulko feels Arthur’s eyes on him, and the man says, “huh.” Mera thwacks him, and Vulko thinks she’s always been clever. 

“Now,” she says as dawn breaks and the sea floods with brilliant pinks and oranges and the ocean around them begins to calm, “you two have some work to do. And Vulko and I have someone we must visit. We’ll return,” she says, and Arthur breaks into a wide grin. He’s clever, too, in his own way. 

Vulko and Atlanna, hands still clutched together, slip into the sea and swim together as fast as Vulko has ever swam, sliding through the water to the north, towards a lighthouse that has never wavered and has always born them to safety. 

\--

Tom is standing on the edge of the dock watching the sunrise, just like he promised he always would be. Vulko presses a kiss to Atlanna’s lips while they are still underwater looking up at him and says, “Go to him.”

Atlanna kisses him back without hesitation and then flies from the sea to the dock to pull Tom into her arms. 

Vulko watches from beneath. They approach one another cautiously and then with abandon, two lovers reunited after three decades of pain and patience. They are beautiful; dark and light, soft and hard. Two perfect beings from two different worlds. 

They kiss and Vulko cannot look away. 

His work is done. He is finally done. Arthur is on the throne, the war will not come to fruition, Atlanna is alive, and she and Tom are in each other’s arms. 

He feels light, airy, like he could be carried away by an errant current. 

Then there is a splash, and Atlanna is with him again, smiling and shining and bright and pulling him along by the hand until they break the surface.

Tom whoops like Arthur used to as a child. He’s older. They’re all three of them so much older. 

Atlanna pulls him from the water and they tumble into each other’s arms. 

They don’t know how to live in peace, to exist together without external threat. Vulko breathes in the smell of Tom’s sweat, the evaporating sea water from Atlanna’s skin, and the crisp cold morning air of the surface. Behind them, the lighthouse stands tall and strong and unwavering, brave and unafraid where the sea meets the land.

They have survived the impossible; they will manage this, too. 


End file.
